professional photographer, exhibited several views of Melbourne and its suburbs in the form of 'instantaneous stereographs’ at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition as 'Robert E. Joseph’, photographer of 163 Collins Street East. His 'Stereoscopic Cabinet, and Album Views of Victorian Scenery’ received an honourable mention, while his attempt at a 'snap-shot’ effect (before this was technically feasible) was singled out for comment in a review of the exhibition by the pseudonymous critic 'Sol’. 'Instantaneous photography’, Sol wrote, 'should be far more practised among us than it is’.
“To see the stir of the Great Babel and not feel the crowd”, was spoken of by Cowper as a pleasurable employment, even without so valuable an aid. The absence of life in photographs generally is always a drawback to their effectiveness, and the attempts of some artists to supply this defect are as ludicrous as they are clumsy. These instantaneous views are evidently the work of a beginner. Some of the difficulties he has had to contend with are easily recognizable; but with some practice and patient perseverance they will no doubt be speedily overcome.
It was not, however, until the introduction of the dry plate, called the 'instantaneous process’ when it was introduced into Australia at the beginning of the 1880s, that a sense of movement was successfully incorporated into photographs.
The photographer was almost certainly the young Robert Ellis Joseph (1845-1902), son of Benjamin Joseph and Mathilda née Mosely, from Swansea, Wales. He became a research scientist in Melbourne (compatible with an interest in photography) then in 1877 enlisted in the Victorian Engineer Corps, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He married Clara Mier of a Melbourne Jewish family in about 1873 and they had five children. Robert Ellis Joseph died in Melbourne on 23 April 1902; an obituary was published in the Melbourne Herald two days later.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
